My first attempt to use Fedora 19 KDE was not very successful. I was not able
to even login into the system, spinning on the login screen endlessly. So much for that. In the beta phase
before that, I discovered a whole bunch of bugs, including a severe kernel panic that would kick in on the
graphical stack approx. five minutes into the session. All in all, it was a blunder.

Then, in the spring, Fedora 18 was a sore visage for me eyes. And on my Asus
ultrabook, it would not even boot. It sounds as if Fedora and I are not meant
to be. But then I revived my aging LG laptop, and had Kubuntu committed there, but I also left a spare
partition for games and testing. Which means I decided to give Fedora one more chance.

Live session

This time, things worked out well. I was able to reach the live session without any silly questions being
asked. You will note that the kernel has been updated since the official release, so some of the funky stuff
may have been fixed. Must have been. But then again, the LG machine is
different from the T61 test box, hence the uncertainty.

For those of you asking, the LG RD510 laptop comes with a four-year-old dual-core CPU, 4GB RAM, 320GB disk and
Nvidia 9600M GS card, which places it somewhere in the mid-low range, but the plentitude of memory does give us
a lot of leeway.

There were no problems in the live session, in general. No crashes, for starters. Then, Samba sharing worked
fine, which has been rectified since times past. The Nouveau driver was also loaded and doing its job pretty
well. However, if you're looking for any sort of excitement, you will have to wait for after the installation.
Which is our next step.

Installation

You will recall the Fedora 18 attempt, for sure. It was horrible. The installer is probably the least intuitive
and useful application ever put together. But then, I have expressed my feelings quite graphically the last
time, I will save you the venom this time around. Somewhat.

However, the installer is still massively stupid and rather dangerous, because it hides its most important
stuff away, and you have to keep on clicking until you figure out what it is you're supposed to be doing. Don't
forget, this is a dual-boot machine, with Kubuntu already there, so
we might yet screw things up. Let's see.

You get that acentric view, where you click on things and then go back to the summary view. The progress is not
linear, so this is confusing and annoying. Because it actually forces you to re-review everything, wasting time
and bleeding your confidence away ever so gently.

The Storage section, which reads Installation Destination, has some Automatic partitioning selected, which
means nothing to me just yet. As an expert so to speak, I would assume this translates into Fedora will do what
it wants, it's such a badass. The button that tells
you have completed a step and can move safety forward remains tiny and it is still lodged in the top left
corner. Font size, font weight, font family type, it's a party all right.

Let's skip the easy parts. Storage. First select your disk. Then, check the little blue hyperlink at the
bottom, because if you don't, this will override your default bootloader. Now, imagine a newbie trying this
thing. You would assume the piece that controls the boot sequence of the whole system would get at least equal
attention to all other components, but no. It's almost an afterthought.

Above, what is the difference between Do not install and Remove. What exactly are you trying to tell me
please. Honestly, I am trying to follow the logic, but I am struggling to sympathize. Remove what? Fedora?
Sounds like a tempting offer right now.

Next, you are asked to configure Installation Options, so to speak. Wrong. We are still in the Storage section.
And this is all about selecting the partition scheme. And what you could do in a single step in the old
Anaconda installer, and you can still do in pretty much any other distro out there, has become a three-four
step ordeal of confusing and mislabeled settings.

I still have no idea what Reclaim space means - repartition and free? I do no want any preset, so it means
Custom partitioning. Again, the hierarchy of using a preset scheme and making your own selection is different,
while ideally these options should be given the same weight and attention. But no.

Now, Custom Partitioning takes you to - Manual Partitioning. More labels gone bad. And here, in the left
column, you have the list of existing partitions and their mount points. In my case, Fedora did properly
recognize Kubuntu's root and home. But they are marked in a confusing manner. Let me elaborate.

The Unknown Linux has its /home, swap and /, clearly marked. But are these not mount points you need for your
own installation? So what does this mean really? Are you being given information? Or is this a selection? Or
maybe just stupidity, and there's no point asking questions?

If you're smart like I am, then you will click on the Unknown ext4 partition that has nothing installed on it,
and you will set the mount point to /. No worries. Don't forget to click Update Settings, because if you do
not, your selection will be erased.

But you think you're done, don't you. Well, no. Fedora will not install unless you also reformat the partition.
Apparently, it does not like existing filesystems, which is plain stupid, because it's ext4 all right.

Now, go back to the top left corner and click done. Approve the filesystem formatting.

Then, in the main menu, click Begin Installation, in the right bottom corner. And notice the warning that only
now the disks will be touched and re-partitioned and re-formatted. Next, you need to create the root password
and your own user. No fancy slides.

This moronic installation took about 15 minutes, which is fairly fast. There were no problems, and Kubuntu and
its bootloader remained intact. But if you think I'm just being grumpy for the sake
of clicks, then you're mistaken. This installer needs to be aborted and fast, and rewritten from scratch with
sane, human logic as the driving factor. You cannot allow people with a CS degree to do any kind of ergonomics
decision making. Keep those code monkeys chained in their cubes.

Using Fedora- A seesaw of good and bad

All right, time to see what can be done with Schroedinger's Cat. So far, so boring, because there is not that
much that Fedora offers by default. But we have a handful of interesting stuff ahead of us, like the easyLife
setup for codecs and pr0n as well as the Nvidia drivers setup, which would be my first
ever with a Fedora release.

easyLife

Disregard the clunky design and spelling errors. This tool will help
you configure extra repositories and grab some good stuff that will transform a boring, bland Fedora into a
practical system. Codecs, SELinux culling, media players, sudo permissions, new icon themes, and whatnot. Jolly
fun. Oh yes, when you quote this article, do not forget to call me a noob for using easyLife, because new users
worldwide will totally relate with the Fedora mailing list GNUkakke attitude.

As you will notice, one of the things I tried was Nvidia drivers. Let's see what happens. BTW, this review will
also highlight how you ought to proceed about doing things in Fedora, so you can learn from my mistakes.

Nvidia, take one

As you would expect, after the first boot, Nouveau was still loaded, but I had no graphical session at all. A
paradox, if you will. A quick check of the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file highlighted the problem. Nvidia there, but
it ain't loaded. Figures.

I moved the file away so I could get to the graphical section and try to fix some of the problems. After
reboot, the system loaded just fine, but once again, with the undesired set of Nouveau drivers. Time for some
blacklisting. If you remember my CentOS Nvidia guide, there, I highlighted how
you can blacklist the Nouveau driver on the GRUB command line. Indeed, using rdblacklist=nouveau works. But I could use either plain VESA or just stare at a black
console screen, but my desire to use Nvidia drivers was not getting anywhere.

Using Nouveau drivers once again, I started exploring some more. I thought that maybe easyLife was using a
wrong procedure for installing the drivers, but no, everything was hunky dory there. Then, I compared the
running kernel to the devel version, yet another trick we have learned while pimping CentOS to satisfaction.
Voila. Therein lies the rub.

Package updates & Nvidia, take two

Fedora pretty much wanted to update everything. This took a while, and I'm wondering if the delta crunching is
worth the extra time compared to flat full-speed downloads, but never mind that. There was a problem with lots
of repo mirrors missing crucial packages, so the system had to shuffle around, trying different sources to get
the needed stuff. Quite disturbing.

Once the system was fully up to date, and luckily without any fiasco due to the repo problems earlier, I
rebooted into Kubuntu, updated the bootloader, restored the xorg.conf file under Fedora's root, and now
finally, without any tricks or hacks, the Nvidia driver loaded correctly, and I was able to use the system as
intended. Driver set 319 FTW!

Applications

Do not expect much from Fedora. You will get some basic programs. GwenView, Amarok, Calligra Words, Okular,
Marble, and such. No Firefox, no fancy stuff. But that's fine, I guess after all
we've been through.

Multimedia

After some easyLife redecoration, you get your stuff - Flash and MP3 plugins.

Beautification

Fedora 19 Schroedinger's Cat with KDE is not an ugly beast. You get all the usual perks of KDE, including some
sweet desktop effects and a jolly Alt-Tab effect. Throw in some icons we installed earlier, plus great
wallpapers from wallbase.cc, and you're king of the castle, king of the castle.
Narrate that in Borat voice, please. And yes, that's a Faenza set on KDE, w00t. Awesome.

System resources, stability

No crashes, nothing. Amazing. Fedora really surprises sometimes. HOWEVER, KDEWallet really annoyed me a few
times, refusing Wireless access and such, plus you still get those silly failed messages when connecting to
access points. Something needs to be done about this menace called KDEWallet. It needs to be reconfigured so it
does not pester and molest users needlessly.

Suspend & resume also worked fine. The system was rather fast. Remember, this is not the latest and
greatest laptop, the disk only revs up to 5,400 rpm, and the processor has just two cores. No SSD tricks. And
yet, not bad at all. However, the price is a hefty memory consumption, at around 750MB. Very costly, and about
250MB more than Kubuntu on the same hardware. Sure, we cannot compare with other systems, but this extra is not
justifiable.

Printing

Well, Samba printing did not work really. The Browse button is grayed out, and the only solution for you is to
use an alternative printing utility until the forces that be resolve
this on the system level. Another bug is a double authentication prompt when you launch the printing tool, once
when you start it, and the other time when you try to add a new printer.

Conclusion

My second attempt at using Fedora 19 Schroedinger's Cat with KDE was a success of a sort. On the bright side, I
managed to achieve pretty much everything I wanted, and that includes a harmless installation, codecs, Nvidia
drivers, apps, beauty, and such like, with decent performance and no crashes in return.

However, I had to work hard to get everything sorted out, and it was not a very pleasant experience, although
you will get some extra two three tutorials from this attempt. Several hours for something you get for granted
in Kubuntu or maybe Linux Mint. And while I like the RedHat base, I wonder why anyone would want to give Fedora
anything more than a passing glance. Oh, the installer is total crap. But I am ignoring it for the sake of
innocent masses, even though it should be roundhouse kicked to oblivion. Purged with chlorine, set afire, and
then launched into orbit, then shot down with an ASAT missile, and the debris scattered in all four oceans.
Something like that. More or less.

Well, overall, at the end of the day, Fedora 19 looks decent. It's a modern, fairly fast distro, and you can
kill the built-in boredom relatively easily. Just make sure you update the system first, and you will save
yourself a handful of trouble. My grade would be something like 7.5/10. Not bad, but it sure can be a lot
better. We're done.